1. Field
This disclosure generally relates to audio communications, and more particularly, to devices that process encoded and/or compressed audio.
2. Background
Various audio coding techniques are known. Generally, contemporary audio coding involves processing digitized audio to reduce the size, i.e., bandwidth, of a digital signal representing the audio, while attempting to maintain the fidelity of encoded audio to the original audio signal. The audio coding process is frequently referred to as audio compression, and the coding processes themselves often reside in devices referred to as audio codecs. Audio coding processes may involve encoding and/or decoding operations.
Some audio coding algorithms, called lossy algorithms, remove information from the audio signal to reduce its bandwidth. However, the removal of audio information often results in noise being added to the encoded audio signal. Other types of audio coding algorithms, called lossless algorithms, use sophisticated signal processing techniques to remove only redundant information from the audio signal. These types of algorithms generally do not introduce noise into the processed audio signal, and thus, produce a higher quality encoded audio signal.
As briefly described above, various types of audio coding processes have different characteristics, be they audio quality, process complexity, compression rate, power consumption, process latency, or the like. In some circumstances, it would be desirable to have a device that could select among different audio coding processes to take advantage of the differences in their characteristics.